An American woman who posed as an heiress to the fictional Irish royal family has been found guilty of defrauding people out of more than £100,000 in Northern Ireland - after pulling similar stunts in the United States.
Marianne 'Mair' Smyth stole the six-figure sum from friends and customers while working as a mortgage adviser between 2008 and 2010 - then fled overseas to continue conning others, claiming to be on the run from the IRA.
She was sentenced to five years in a California jail in 2019 after swindling TV producer Johnathan Walton out of almost $100,000.
Smyth - alleged to be hiring herself out for sex to a dozen men a month on a 'sugar daddy' website before blackmailing her callers with threats to tell their wives - had also dodged jail after stealing $200,000 from her employer three years prior.
After fleeing to the US she had also posed as a Satanist occultist and an alternative healer called Lucia Belia, describing herself as 'an Emissary of Satan, a practitioner of Black Magic, a psychic with Clairsentient, Claircognitive, Clairtangient, Clairvoyant, and channeling gifts'.
